He's baaaaack....

OK, so my last post on this blog was over 9 months ago; so, who's counting? Anyway, I hope to get back to posting more often. And, despite what I said in my opening blog post, I probably will be posting on technical issues, as well as general life issues as well. Anyway, so what happened with the Christian Music Festival? Here's a brief recap of events since my last post.

Well, I ended up being much more involved in the hands-on coordination of things leading up to the festival. The chairman of our festival committee, by his own admission (afterwards), is great with ideas, but a little less great with the logistics ends of things. So, I jumped in and helped with various logistical issues (working with vendors to get stages, handling health dept. permits for our food vendors, putting together the program, etc).

August 2nd finally rolled around. Of course, Mother Nature had it in for us from the start. Anyone in the Mid-Atlantic region of the U.S. knows what the weather can be like at that time of the year. It was warm (in the low to mid 90's) but, worse, we were looking at possible thunderstorms. As it turns out, we had two near misses from heavy thunderstorms and hail - resulting in two stoppages of performances. At around 5:00 PM, we finally got hit directly - heavy winds and a short downpour. This apparently was the last straw for our chairman as he announced (as the storm is happening) "That's it!". No waiting to see how long it would last - which ended up being about 30 minutes, at most.

In terms of attendance, we had about 120-130 paying attendees; another 50 or so were complimentary tickets for sponsors. So, not an overwhelming turnout. The nice thing was the feedback from the performers. Almost all were impressed with how organized everything was and indicated that they would love to come back. Our attendees were more critical. Most apparently do not attend "festivals" and understand that they would be sitting out in the open for a number of hours. Our biggest complaint was about providing shade for attendees. Point taken.

The chairman of last year's festival stepped down and I stepped up to run for Chairman. Of course, life has a way of throwing you curves. Right after taking over the chairman position, my wonderful wife began working full-time again (although it was supposed to be temporary, she is still working full-time as I write this post). So, the time I can devote to planning and coordination of the festival became much tighter. Ultimately, at the November meeting of our committee, I regretably announced my resignation as chairman. Our committee chair for performers also stepped down, so now three of the persons that were very much involved last year are no longer in key positions on the committee.

As a result of the resignations and the economy, a discussion ensued about how to proceed for the 2009 festival. We agreed that it might be best to scale it back to an indoor concert where there are less logistics to worry about. However, we did not get much past the general idea of a concert. Much more planning needs to be done to pull something off.

Well, that's where things stand with the festival. As thing change, I will try to provide updates via this blog.